Mouton '96 to be won

At the end of March we explained in Situation (temporarily) vacant: restaurant critic how Nick would be busy recuperating over the next few weeks. We are therefore inviting you to submit restaurant reviews or articles about eating out for us to publish in his absence. I will send a bottle of Ch Mouton-Rothschild 1996 to the author of the article I think best of all those we publish. (This is the vintage adorned with the work of Chinese artist Gu Gan, as right.)

I should point out that this scheme concerns this website only. The Financial Times is making its own plans for fielding substitutes for our favourite restaurant correspondent.

He is doing well after his three-plus weeks in hospital after a scheduled operation on his gut in mid March. This morning he even felt strong enough to tackle the small pile of official correspondence that had accumulated on his desk. But he is yet to go for a walk and has to rest every afternoon, so it will be a while before he is back to full restaurant reviewing mode.

I apologise that I can’t say exactly for how long we will be seeking alternative restaurant reviewers but we are very grateful for all submissions received so far. There has been a (very) small flood of them just after the Easter weekend and we even have our first duplicates: two reviews of one small Canadian restaurant and two articles that mention another in the hills of the Corbières.

Articles can be about establishments anywhere in the world, of any style or pretension provided they serve food. We’d just like them to be a good and ideally useful read. Please note that we seek original material that has not been published elsewhere and would be very grateful for at least one accompanying image we can reproduce as a 200 pixel square.

Submissions should be sent to editorial@jancisrobinson.com. We will publish all our favourites and will announce the winner of the Mouton ’96 to celebrate Nick’s return to the gastronomic saddle.